Comment by sasquatch7704@lemmy.world on A European Starlink rival’s shares skyrocketed 390% in a week

Unpopular opinion: we don’t need freaking internet from satellites, just get cat6 in every home and everyone is happy. I’m sure the cost would be lower then having to launch 999999.91 satellites to have similar speeds

cat 6 in every home lol. you have any idea about range of cat 6? I mean, any?

~50m for cat6, ~100 cat6a, enough to get you to a switching box where you connect to fiber.

This would work in the US on the coasts and in the cities.

Even the eastern parts of the west coast states the math gets bad. Running cables over/mountains to service the poorest 10% of the states population.

Getting into the square states you have 10s of thousands of miles of mountains and deserts to get to a vanishing small number of people. There are twice as many people in my city as there are in the entire state of Wyoming and we are the third largest city in Texas.

Are you really going to run cables all over an area of the alps but the size of France to bring service to a number of people equivalent to one midsize city? Most of it is protected national Park people don’t even live in.

Most of Nevada is uninhabited desert with some of the hottest temperatures on earth.

We can leave half of Texas empty and still have service for 95% of the population.

It’s not as simple as “just do it” over here. We have huge problems, but the challenges are legit.

I know that cable is not a solution for everyone but most of the humans like to live in communities, yes there’s are exception. Wiki says US population is about 80% in urban

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States

You realize the most significant use of satellite internet right now is Ukraine, right? Like you’re aware that this has almost nothing to do with the US and is about starlink/Elon fucking with Ukraine and the internet they provide the military fighting in a war. Right? Like you’re not that oblivious, right? You’re not jumping in here suggesting they lay cat6 in a warzone are you? Cus that would just be foolish and make you look like a jackass, which I’m sure you’re not.

Obviously I’m not suggesting Ukraine should use cat6 or fiber, but those are exceptional situation and that’s a military use case.

I meant for day to day use, most people already live in urban area are satellites don’t make sens

oh I didn’t know there’s a fiber box in 100m at any place in the country! tell that to my ISP who cant serve any internet through the landline telephone cable because it’s too far from distribution! oh and also to all the customers of microwave wireless networks.

and this doesn’t even need to be on the countryside! It’s a problem here even in villages that the ISP is not allowed to run any cables on the high voltage electric poles!

Oh so now there’s also fiber is there?

Obviously there is fiber, copper is usually “last mile”. Its cheaper to have a long fiber and short copper. Copper more or less anyone can install, fiber is more specialized.

I’m not proposing to reinvent the wheel, just continue what has proven to work.

You don’t seem to be getting it. Where is the fiber coming from? These properties almost certainly have only copper the whole way, so in order to upgrade them to decent internet they would have to completely relay the fiber line, and unlike copper, fiber requires electricity so then they have to lay an electrical line as well. It’s like a whole thing.

It’s only economically viable to do that when there’s going to be a large population density at the other end for small rural locations it really isn’t worth it.

Your opinion is not unpopular, it is simply uninformed.

Copper at decent speeds requires more signal amplification then fiber

Single-Mode Fiber (SMF): Max Length: Up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) or more without needing signal boosters or amplifiers

The Australian government is heavily criticised for half-assing fibre internet because they did copper to the house in most cases. We still, a decade later, have one of the worst internet in the western world.

I think satellites are likely much cheaper to deliver internet to a whole continent than trying to run bloody copper.

Satellites are not there for speed, but breadth

You do if you’re fighting a war against Putin and the ketamine troll is threatening to turn off your internet.

There are remote areas where cable won’t reach. For example, I need surveillance on a remote farm and I would love to get internet there.

I understand, but that is the exception. Even in your case probably getting 4G / 5G to that area would be cheaper / easier long term. Also Europe has a relatively high density compared with other continents

I’m in Italy and outside cities, the Internet is still horrendous. And as I said, if you have a remote farm or garden, which are fairly common here, then you are on your own. Sim based internet is a thing, but there are monthly limits which are risky when you need surveillance and automation to be always live.

4G or 5G would still be a better cheaper alternative, I’m not sure what bandwidth a starlink / whatever other alternative but my guess is that is much lower then a classic cell tower.

Cell towers usually have multiple directional antennas, smaller coverage but much cheaper to maintain. Also can be fixed, can be upgraded to next generation. Satellites are pretty much one time use, can’t be upgraded, can’t be fixed, if something goes wrong the solution is to burn and send another one.

Cable will reach anywhere. There is not such a place that cable “will not reach”. Is there a profit incentive to serve you as a customer in a capitalist system? Maybe not. But cable will reach.

Not sure if you are in Europe, but in the US there are places where you could walk the width of Germany and see 100 houses. It does not serve to be technically correct here. Also, how would that work with boats / other vehicles and places without infrastructures?

There are exceptions, but in most cases (in Europe) hardwire should work fine. The problem is that starlink is advertised for any use case.

Their are villages in rural England who don’t have fiber. It wouldn’t be cost-effective delay it for the six customers that require it.

In a lot of these places the best option is 4G. In a previous job we setup a small area with 4G internet and it was both faster and cheaper than what BT was providing.

Massive farmhouse and surrounding buildings that had all been converted into separate homes, not sure exactly how many people lived there, somewhere around 15 or so. There was also a functioning farm there as well which was why we set it up, the total LAN covered an area like half a km wide. Connecting everyone up with 4G was a cheap side benefit to the main project so it only cost like £100 extra.

The cost of a cable to a remote cabin is clearly not worth it either when you can just use a 4G antenna instead at a fraction of the cost. Ships won’t even be able to reach 4G signals.

Well, cable will not reach a warzone which is a rather pertinent use for a satellite communication system at present.

You’d need signal boosters at regular intervals, which need power… so now you’re running multiple cables.

But you can’t run them too close together as the power will induce noise in the data cable.

And after a long distance even the power needs boosting.

And to protect the cables, you’d need to bury them or put them on poles. Separately.

At a certain point, cable becomes the expensive option…

Usually fiber is used between cities and in cities and copper is for the “last mile”. Usually there is a switching box for the street / building complex

You still need signal reconditioning for fibre too, which needs power…

I know where you’re coming from, but not everywhere is populated enough, so these alternatives exist.

You need it every 100km

I know plent of places in my European country where cable does reach, but was made for landline phones and cannot carry any data for internet because its so far from the nearest distribution center. even wireless like microwave can’t sustain more than a quality camera feed

One broken cable can result in a city/town without internet. Speaking from experience.

Also satellites have other uses like GPS

I doubt they use the same satellites for GPS

Now get rid of the home and the cable, how do you cover 99.9% of the earth? Nomads need satellite, and so do rural homes too far from an isp fiber/copper endpoint But yes, if starlink has it done, why double the satellites to do it again with a different name? Because it’s easier to launch 1000 more satellites than dismantle the system that enables such feats.

Cat 6A caps out at like 330 ft. Also thats a ton of copper.

Fiber optic nonprofit utilities makes more sense in cities and in rural areas we should just subsidize cell phone data plans.

I didn’t say that cat6 should be used everywhere, usually is just for “last mile delivery” get it from your home to a switching box that has fiber.

Bring back ethernet jacks on phones!

Exactly! Amazon can ship it to you for like 10 bucks. Problem solved!

You need to plug it into something though. If you are on a boat, what are you going to plug into?

For my house I use a 4G router and a combination of ethernet and wifi over the LAN. 4G is also fine for kayaking, but if I had a larger boat that went further out and for longer I would probably consider satellite options.

supporting this motion

Not unpopular but I think they are just trying to grab some of SpaceX market share in this space (no pun intended). I agree cable is better but these folks are trying to make money.

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A European Starlink rival’s shares skyrocketed 390% in a week — here’s why(www.cnbc.com)

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